My love-hate relationship with Keurig.com—and (I hate to say it) some Indians

Last Tuesday morning, I got up and stumbled into the kitchen, slid a k-cup into my Keurig K-Supreme, hit ‘10 oz’ and the big “K” button, went to the bathroom, came back into the kitchen and my coffee mug had exactly 2 oz of scalding hot… something that smelled like burnt plastic.  Uh-oh.

The machine was dead.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t bring it back to life.  I knew this was coming, as the last couple weeks my cups of coffee were getting smaller and increasingly hotter.  I’ve only owned the machine 3 years, but I swear to God I wasn’t angry in the least, just sad.  Those were 3 very good years.

I got out my old K10 from storage (a mini I bought many years ago) and sighed as it creaked out 6 oz. of lukewarm, watery coffee.  I had to have another K-Supreme.  They use the same k-cups, and with 5 injection needles instead of one, produce nearly double the amount of coffee, double the strength, double the temp and in half the time too. 

I jumped on my computer, headed over to Amazon.com, thought “Why don’t I give my business to someone else for a change?” and went to Keurig.com instead.  Ah!  They had a wonderful deal going on their coffee machines—if you “bundled one”, that is bought the machine and signed up for a coffee subscription of at least 16 boxes, you’d get the machine at a BIG discount.  Well, I already have a k-cup subscription at Amazon, so I’ll cancel that and get my monthly 4 boxes here instead.  And that’s just what I did.

But when I hit the ‘Buy it Now’ button on my Keurig shopping cart, a brown banner flashed across the top of my screen.  “THIS METHOD OF PAYMENT CANNOT BE AUTHORIZED AND MAY BE FRAUDULENT.  CONTACT YOUR CARD ISSUER OR USE ANOTHER CARD.”

That’s crazy!  I just used my Visa last night at the hardware store!  I got out my second Visa card and the same thing happened.  Okay, there’s something wrong with Keurig’s website.

I went down to the bottom of the page, called the Customer Support number and an Indian woman answered.  She sounded like she was talking through a double-pane window.  I told her what happened, she said “Daht eez fine sur now to start wit thee emel of yours and name?”   I said “You want my email address and name?”  She said “Yes, daht will be perfect of you.”  

I gave it to her.  EDOUGMORRIS@GMAIL.COM.  She asked me to repeat it.  I did.  She asked me to spell it.  I did.  She said “Perfect.  Now slower.”  I spelled it very slowly.  She asked me to spell it with a word for each letter.  “E as in elephant, D as in Douglas, O as in onion…”   She asked me to do it again.

On the eighth request for my email address, I said “May I PLEASE speak to someone else?”  She said after I gave her my name and email address.  I hung up.

Now I want to state for the record, I like Indians.  I’ve never met one that wasn’t smart, friendly, polite and I worked with many in my IT career.  At UPMC, I often coordinated large data transfers with a round Indian named Sandeep, who I liked so much I had trouble hiding my affection for the man.  It was so apparent that the women in my group tried to “out” me.

(Danielle, if you’re reading this.. does Sandeep still work with Data Warehouse?  Will you tell him I said hi?)

So anyway… I waited an hour, then called Customer Support again and this time got an Indian male.  His English was so broken I had to keep interrupting him to say “I’m sorry, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”  When he began muttering in Hindi, I hung up.

I made a cup of tea, took a deep breath and called Customer Support again.  Another Indian male, but this one I could understand a little better.  When he told me to call my credit card issuer and have my account “mended”, I told him the card did not need mending—his website was broken.  He said “Very good sir, thank you.  Now your next step is to call your credit card issuer and report your invalid card will you do this for me please?“  

I hung up on him too.

I put on my shoes, went for a walk and wondered what to do next.  I came home, cleared my computer’s cache, attempted the order again and got the same “fraudulent card” message.  I called Customer Support for the fourth time, got another Indian man, asked him to PLEASE listen, he said of course and afterward he said “Mr. Morris here is what we will do.  I will cancel your account and create for you another member account.”  I said ok.  He said “While I do that, call your credit card issuer and instruct them you have a fraudulent card and require a new number.“

I said “Goodbye, I’m hanging up now.”  His last words were “WAIT MISTER MORRIS WHAT IS YOUR EMAIL!!”   

I closed the Keurig page, went on Amazon and ordered a K-Supreme machine (at the top).  It said it would arrive in 10-11 days, but was delivered in 4, early Saturday morning.  And all was right with the world.

And finally, I should add that this past Friday, I got an email from Keurig.com (how’d they get my email address?  I’m kidding) that apologized for the trouble I experienced on their website, they looked into the issue and found my account was blocked in error by their fraud software. 

They removed the block and added a coupon for 2 free boxes of coffee to my online shopping cart when I’m ready to complete my order. 

Gee fellas I’m sorry, but I took my business elsewhere.  Love your machines though!